


In The Woods Somewhere

by siin



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Gen, also includes glenn, and his parents - Freeform, dedue only gets mentioned but hey, dimitri is 1 angsty boy, dimitri is having the worst day of his life, dude might as well tear out his eye amirite, i should have written porn instead of this, mild gore warning, why the f did i even write this
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-11
Updated: 2019-08-11
Packaged: 2020-08-19 04:41:05
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,184
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20203873
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/siin/pseuds/siin
Summary: Dimitri wanders around the woods aimlessly - trying to escape his very own fate.





	In The Woods Somewhere

**Author's Note:**

> i started writing this at 11pm listening to hozier, don‘t look at me. my english is rusty af.

**“I raised myself.**

**My legs were weak.**

**I prayed my mind be good to me.”**

It would take mere seconds, he thought, for his legs to give out beneath him. Every step he took felt more and more unbearable - he was exhausted, his breath ragged, his clothes torn at the edges, his head spinning and yearning for a well deserved rest. It had been days since he last had a chance to rest up, his tired legs taking him wherever he wanted to, supporting his weary body even now, despite the fact he hadn’t rest up in a while. His vision was turning bleary, but he couldn’t stop now - not for his own sake, not for Dedue’s sake or anyone elses. As much as Dimitri resented it, as much as his legs were feeling like they were no longer part of his body, about to come off every second, he wandered through the woods - dried leaves and thorns cracking beneath his boots, beneath his bruised and beaten body.

Instead of dying like he should have, he escaped their grasp, left behind what was dear to him - left the only person offering him solace in those dark days in their grasp. The mere thought of it, the certainty of his death because of his own escape, it weighted heavy on his heart - made him snarl at the vast expanse of trees stretching before him. If time allowed it, if this world were to allow it, he’d love nothing more than to rest up, catch up on those sleepless nights that he had spent, roaming through unfamiliar areas, hoping to find a path leading somewhere, anywhere he knew - but his legs carried him further away from home, from Faerghus, as fast as he could, back to Garreg Mach; back to a place where he could hide.

The moonlight had danced across the silver plates and scraps of armor he had been wearing - adorned by the blood of his enemies, his folk, the traitors. Unfiltered through trees it shone down upon him, putting an empty crown atop his head, sinking into his skull and clawing away at his skin and flesh. More than once had fear crept up his throat while his legs relentlessly carried him, his hands supporting him, pressing bloodstained fingers against the bark of one tree after the other, searching for some sort guidance from the moon above that simply wasn’t there. Were he to stop now, he knew, whoever was tasked with finding him would tear his head from his neck in an instant - as if it were a fruit, ripe for picking.

He valued the life he had been gifted more than to die here, let his legs give in, even if the only thing he could feel was soreness, every step hurting more than the last. Dimitri stopped, leaning against a tree, just for a second to catch his breath - despite urging himself not to do it, despite realizing that this had been a horrible idea soon after. Footsteps, dashing towards him, the creaking sounds of dry leaves coming closer, dry branches giving out beneath their heavy armor - they were getting closer and closer, dread evident on his face, seen by no one but the creatures of the night, hidden away in those places the moon didn’t alight. Without much of a second thought, his legs were forced to move again, slower than earlier - his exhaustion surfacing more and more before he tumbled over, his back facing the directions the steps were coming from. Trying to scramble to his feet, he fell down once again - and again, again, again. With every attempt, every noise he made, they came closer and closer - his face paling even more, his eyes welling up with tears as he knew that everything Dedue had done for him would he naught in a minute, in mere seconds. His sacrifice had been in vain.

As he shook his head, trying to wipe away those teardrops trickling down onto his face, he forced his body up once more, attempting to not make this woods, somewhere he didn‘t even know, his last resting place. All of this ended with a cold boot pressed against his back, forcing him back down into the leafy expanse, fear by now evident on his face.

“We finally found you,” the voice snarled at him. Dimitri had no idea who it was, but soon enough a lance was driven into the ground, right in front of his face - blurry reflections of himself directed back at him, as well as the insignia of his own kingdom, the insignia of Faerghus carved into it with utmost care, the edges of it scratched and worn.

“I don’t know what you were thinking, trying to outrun us - or siding with the people of Duscur. Whatever your idea was, should you have ascended the throne, it won’t come to fruition now - I’m going to pick that delicate head of yours off of your shoulders and deliver it to Lady Cornelia,” the knight paused for a second, lifting the foot off of Dimitri’s back, crouching down and grabbing him by his hair - subsequently pulling him upward, out of the mud and leaves he had been pressed against. “You look terrible, but that won’t matter now, would it? Do you have any last words?”

Raising him up to stand on his own shaking legs, the knight held him by his hair, staring into his face - maybe searching for dignity, for forgiveness, for any emotion at all. Dimitri, on the other hand, didn’t care. He averted his gaze, trying to get a clear picture of his surroundings, cloaked in shadows, in a blur. His head hurt, his legs were begging him to stop forcing himself to do anything; resting was the best option, accepting his defeat at the hands of a man he didn’t know, a face that he didn’t wish to see. 

“Just looking at you pisses me off,” he hissed. Dull pain spread from one cheek to the other, as soon as a fist had met his face - Dimitri didn’t bother speaking, he had no last words. Hitting the ground once again, the impact more rough than the last one, he couldn’t catch himself, falling onto his back this time. Air was dragged out of his lungs when an armored boot was brought down upon his chest, pressing against his ribcage - maybe hoping to crush one or two of them, piercing his lung or even his heart. As if it were instinct, he grabbed onto the leg with his hands, tried to move it away, hold it off with that kind of strength everyone deemed him a monster for, but none of that seemed to be present any longer. The knight leaned down, facing him eye to eye this time, Dimitri staring back at him - and averting his gaze the moment he saw something, in the corner of his eye, a ghastly figures of ages past, coming to haunt him in this sleepless night.

Whatever it was that rallied through his body in that moment, maybe it was the encroaching footsteps of the other knights, he spit the knight on top of him into his face - a mix of blood and saliva - and with a cracking, a crunching sound from his ribs, he threw him off of his body, to the hardened and cold ground, far away from the snowy fields of Faerghus. Scrambling to his feet, he grabbed the lance, trampled upon the poor mans hands and brought down the lance onto him, ungracefully stabbing him into his abdomen, twisting the blade in his flesh to give him a permanent reminder. “Don’t you dare look down upon me.”

Tearing off his head, crushing his skull with his bare hands - some worthy punishment to give a traitor, a delusional knight siding with the Empire - the surge of adrenaline within him, the whispers from somewhere far in the woods, calling out to him, wanting to draw him closer to them - to hear their pleading - they mended his pain, the numbness in his legs, if only for a short time. Brandishing the stolen lance once again, he aims it at the knight’s throat. “Any last words, traitor?” But all that followed was silence as the lance tore through flesh, robbing the man of his ability to breathe, to speak - the only thing left in his eyes was dread, tears and a mouth left hanging open, signaling screams of agony that simply weren’t there, going out silent.

A hand on his shoulder stopped him from further massacring the dying man, slitting him open and dragging out his innards, inflicting more pain upon him like he would deserve - instead, a blade was pointed at his face the moment he turned around, his teeth gritted. Pointed at his throat, his instincts told him to tear away from the knight that just had shown up - but backing off only led to him running right into another. The best response in this situation would be to run away, search for a save haven, but now that they had spotted the scraggly figure he had become over the last few days, they would find him wherever he could drag his worn body. Dimitri hissed, tapping the lance against the floor, taking the matter in his own hands - blurry vision fixated at one of the knights, he stormed at him.

Sending the man tumbling to his own feet, knocking him over, he wrangled in the leaves for his knife, snatching it from his iron grip when he punched him in his face, throwing away the lance. As soon as the knife was his, he embedded it in the man‘s skull, accompanied by the haunting sound of his skull splintering, shattering upon impact, penetrating his brain and tearing through the flesh. Instead of retaining it, a kick to his back send him falling to the floor himself - hitting the ground with his ribcage, a sharp hiss escaping his mouth as he felt something tearing into him, a knife thrown at his side. Dimitri‘s entire body was aching as he tried to regain composure, searching for something, rustling through the leaves beneath him - he pulled out the knife from his side, once again struggling to get on his feet, and the moment he did, the other knight had found his way to him in a now moonless night. There were more than he thought, creeping inwards from the shadows - their numbers akin to that of an entire battalion, sent after one beast to take it down for good.

He never was good with swords or knives, preferring the lance, but searching for it now, after he had thrown it away would not prove of an useful way to spend his time - and thus, he threw the knife back at the knight, who caught it, only for Dimitri to swipe him off of his feet, to trample on his body and rob him of the knife he just had caught, ramming it into his throat, leaving him as he was. They were encroaching, out of their shadows, and as the goddess willed it, he took another one of the knives the man had on him - only to head into an unknown direction, into pitch black darkness, following the ghastly shadow of a man he thought he knew, long ago, leading him to those hiding away from him, urging him to offer them their heads in exchange for his survival back that day.

It was like fleeting, unable to register that he no longer felt his legs at all, as the prince - resembling a bloodied beast at this point - stormed at the knights that had come for his head, straight into their arms, armed with a singular knife to take them all out. Their arms reached out for him, but they couldn‘t stop him, only tear away at the fabric of his clothes as the thirst for vengeance fueled him, urged him to go on and give in to the carnal desire dwelling inside of him, tearing their skin from their flesh and their flesh from their bones - he didn‘t take kindly to traitors. Whatever Glenn desired, whatever his father or mother desired, whatever all those lost souls speaking to him desired and haunted him for, he was ready to avenge them, to give it his all and offer them a mountain of corpses if they wished for it, as long as they kept him going. No longer did exhaustion matter, even if he barely could breathe, even if it stung in his lungs - not even the fact that something tore into him, clouding his already blurry vision red could have stopped him before he hadn‘t dyed the leaves of yesteryear in a sanguine red, spilling the blood and guts of his enemies with but a single knife. By no means was he unscathed, a pulsing pain throbbing through his right eye and the areas around it, covered in more than mere scratches, but he held himself up with a broken lance, throwing up blood onto the soil, colder than ice. They were dead, all of them had fallen, and he was covered in a mix of their blood, trickling down his tired, shivering body, mixing with his own. Everything was said and done as he collapsed onto the floor - he couldn‘t possible stay here, but all the adrenaline within him just mere minutes ago had subsided; and thus, he had crawled around the ground, miserable as he was, stolen from the corpses, looted what he would need, torn his own clothes into shreds to treat one of many injuries before he wandered away, searching for a place to rest up. Wherever his legs would take him, he would accept him - as long as he wouldn‘t have to freeze to die, as long as those who no longer were among them danced among his vision and yearned for more.

———————

Only had he realized, that his eye was injured, when he applied proper bandages to it - tearing off the strips of cloth was easier said than done, the whole thing was pulsing and surrounded by pus from shoddy treatment and it took a strain on him. Hidden away in a small cave, the cinders of his fire were about to go out as well, the soft crackling of it had stopped hours ago and he knew that he wouldn‘t survive the approaching night like this. But then again, there wasn‘t much he could do - despite resting up, trying to regain strength, his head felt heavy on his shoulders, his infected eye injury leading to a fever and whatever broken rib he had was still digging into his flesh, no matter what he did.

Still grimy with dried blood, he contemplated what to do with his fingers before changing the bandages - as to not cause further infections, or make the one he had worse. Slowly but surely he resorted to peeling and rubbing it off, as if he were picking away at scabs like a child bored out of its mind. As soon as he deemed them somewhat clean, as far as he could call anything on him or in this cave clean, he tore away at the soaked and tried up bandages at his right eye - it was more painful than he had anticipated, and as soon as said eye was hit with a fresh wave of air and he forced it open, all it did was stink, blurry splotches showing him dark figures in the corners of the woods, as if they were dead men walking - knights moved from their last resting place, coming to get him.

A gust of wind carried them away again, fever dreams of ages past, and Dimitri sighed, his voice hoarse and his throat dry. Whether he liked it or not, he was stuck here for the time being, bound by mortal coils and the certainty that whatever he did next was crucial, or he‘d die where he was, alone and beaten by an ailment in the woods somewhere, picked apart by maggots, flies and wolves for his flesh, by crows for his eyes and by humans, by traitors for their own satisfaction.

Could he afford to die here? No. Was he about to do so either way? Yes.

Tree branches rustled above him, gusts chasing through them, searching for something, for someone, and as the cinders died out one by one, it got colder - darker. Shaky fingers wrapped the bandages, looted from one of the knights the other day, around his head and thus his eye, his grip on the bandages firm as he closed said eye, wishing to see nothing more of the world beneath this one, the glimpse it offered him to see under the leaves and the soil, to drag him downwards - further and further, closer to those calling out to him with the whispers of the winds, unforgivingly. His head throbbed as he clenched his jaw, body shaking as he got up from his position, supporting himself with the broken lance he had used days earlier - barely holding onto it, shivering as if he were the leaves in the trees themselves, thrown into disarray by the wind howling through the night. If he were to stay here, he would freeze to death the moment he fell asleep - and if he were to fall over while going to get water, he would most certainly not get up on his feet again; but what options did he have? An endless slumber or death from thirst? Neither seemed like a graceful option, a good option to leave this world - a disgrace to those he wished to avenge.

The feeling in his legs had returned, his vision was less blurry than before, but his skull felt like it would burst from the pressure on his brain any moment, that his brain had turned into a gooey mass of something, close to exiting his body through his nose and ears the next chance it would get - it felt heavier than usual and with that, the whispers of those he wanted to neither see or hear had grown clearer, begging him to become the monster everyone saw him as, to bring them her head - Edelgard‘s head. At this very moment, however, this was a goal further out of reach with every growing second, as he limped through the woods, incessant murmuring and mumbling growing louder, drumming against his ears. Their bones, covered in rotten flesh, torn skin, they reached out for him - holding onto him, pressing him downwards, urging to pull him down under the blanket of leaves, rustling beneath his heavy steps - wanting him to join them if he couldn’t fulfill his promise, whispering toward him that he had no place in this world.

“LEAVE ME ALONE!”, he cried into the empty woods, the hands letting go of him, the whimpers and moans of agony subsiding for a second as he dragged his weary body further away from his hideout, trying to find firewood and water to sate himself.

Dimitri snarled, listening to ever persisting chatter the further he went - figures sat by a fire, had set up camp, and by the sound of it they were no travelers. In the haze the fire they created, however, their forms seemed almost legibile to him, familiar and only a few steps away - those tormenting him for years, his family and friends, his beloved ones, circling around the campfire out here, telling stories he had never heard of, ignoring him to their fullest ability. They were haunting him, he thought, for surviving something he shouldn’t have - for stealing their lives in favor of surviving himself.

Dimitri might have been fully aware at some point that this hadn’t been the case, however, at this very moment he felt sickened by the thought alone, knew they had abandoned him and went on without him - that their pleads and their yearning for revenge they couldn’t get themselves was merely there to remind him of what he had done, that he didn’t beed them, that he had abandoned them before they did the same with him. They had left him alone, to fend for himself, in these woods, and if his legs had worked better than they did, he would have stormed at them and would have rid himself of their forms - but unbeknownst to him, they weren’t what they seemed to be as he wandered towards them.

In the glistening of the flame, he spotted something he couldn’t quite explain, but it was then and there when he held up the lance, a grin evident on his face, pointing them towards those sitting at the fire - those familiar faces, stricken with guilt, blown away by the wind at his back. Dimitri had wandered into a nest of thieves, the hideout of rats, mistaking them for those he held dear with a hazy mind - but it didn’t matter who it was, all that mattered was to drive a lance into their flesh, twist it, punch them to the floor, crush their skulls and take their lives before realizing that, despite murdering them like the beast he was claimed to be, he felt no satisfaction - the whispers didn’t stop, their bodies mere husks of strangers that he had slaughtered; of rats dying in the mud like they were supposed to be. Those who weren’t avenged or purged from his mind that night however, they kept bemoaning their existence - voices writhing in agony and pain.

The darker it got, the closer he dragged his body to the dwindling flame, drinking water out of a stolen flask - having stolen from dead men and women he mistook for those plaguing him, those dancing in the flames before him right now, observed with a weary eye. Dimitri sat there, accepting that whatever he did - whatever it was related to these woods - would not bring him one step closer to her, no matter how often he would wander back and forth, he would do nothing but endanger himself, forfeiting Dedue’s last wish the moment he would be killed.

“What must I do to be rid of you?“, he asked the flame, gaze fixated onto it, and as if were to give an answer, it crackled.

Ghastly hans were guiding his own, that of a living corpse wandering through the woods, bemoaning his own torment along those who already left this world, circling in on him. Their murmurs grew louder, clogging up his ears, a static that only he could hear - that robbed him of the ability to make out anything else. The Prince of Faerghus was no longer, accepting that he merely was a puppet by now, dragged around by fate and its thin threads - although those voices coerced him into taking his bandages off, that this would make everything better - as they held his hand in their own, telling him to do it, that they would be pleased by such things, that they could leave him alone if he did it. 

Dimitri took them off, letting the slide to the ground - bringing his fingers up to his face, to his injury, to his eye. He winced at the mere thought of it, but what choices did he have? They were persistent and they insisted that they‘d leave him alone and to his own devices when he did - a cold shiver run down his spine as he pressed against his red eye, digging into the socket just beneath and above it. There was no space, it burned more than he had imagined - the pain making him sick, his head feeling heavier and heavier. As he tug on it, he let out a cry in agony, almost inhuman - he knew that this would make them go away, that this was his very own salvation and that this was what he needed to be rid of it all. Another pull, sounds of flesh, and before he knew it, there no longer was an eyeball in the socket that it once sad in - just an eye, closed shut as if it were to help with easing the pain, which it didn‘t. Their whispers grew silent and they disappeared from his field of vision like they claimed.

Weary, bloodstained hands tended to his empty socket, rewrapping the injury in bandages and mustering his own eyeball - before offering it to the flames before him, as if he were to seal a contract.

In the morning, after he had passed out the flame was no more. Instead, his head throbbed worse than before, his now empty eyesocket hurt more than before - and as he stood up, finding the resolve to finally wander to Garreg Mach, even in such a weakened state, he realized that none of them had left him like he promised. At all. 

Their murmurs only got louder and louder, no matter how far he wandered - no matter how many rats he had killed at Garreg Mach and no matter how many times he attempted to rest up. For this was a curse he didn‘t wish to bear, but had to - for his own sake.


End file.
